Zibaldone

by Leopardi, Giacomo

  “Firmness of character and the faculty to generalize are what form those described as superior men: they are able to think and to act,” [3447] says Monsieur Say in his notes on man and society.1 But there are two kinds of firmness of character, born of quite opposite principles, one from strength of mind, sharpness of intellect, etc., the other from dullness of spirit, inability to reason, to understand, etc., and hence to change opinion, from limited intellect, obtuseness and slowness of mind, etc. And how this might be so, is quite easy to conceive, etc. (16 Sept. 1823.)

  Very often, and perhaps in fact on most occasions, men are not extraordinary as a result of the absolute greatness of any of their qualities, or even as a result of the greatness or force, etc., of such a quality considered relative to what it ordinarily might be in the majority of men. In other words, they are not extraordinary because any of their qualities is extraordinary (that is, not found in the majority) or extraordinarily great or perfect, etc., but only because of an imbalance in these qualities, that is, because one or more of them, without being extraordinary or greater than it commonly would be, dominates the others, stands out and catches the eye as a result. Whereas many men, [3448] all of whose qualities are great (or even extraordinary),1 but well balanced and weighted and which offset each other so that one does not exceed the other, are not held to be extraordinary, because one quality obscures the splendor and obstructs the visibility of the other, and vice versa. And often, having many or several, if not all, great qualities (even extraordinary ones) producing a kind of balance and counterweight, and working in such a way that one of them renders another less remarkable, is itself one reason why a man may appear not to be extraordinary. And the opposite is also true, that to have few qualities, or even just one which is extraordinarily great or extraordinary, producing a loss of balance or equilibrium, not only does not harm the reputation of an extraordinary man or diminish it, but in fact produces and enhances it. (16 Sept. 1823.)

  Tragedies or dramas with happy endings. —Their overall effect is to leave the listener’s feelings in a state of complete equilibrium, that is, to have no effect. —The purpose of drama is not, and must not be, to teach how to fear crime, that is to make men afraid of sinning. A sermon on hell or purgatory would be better for this purpose; or better still, a [3449] reading of the criminal code on stage. Its purpose is to inspire hatred of crime. This is what laws cannot do, for their proper office is to inspire fear, and they alone can do this, or do it more assuredly and better than anything else, except perhaps for the living example of punishment, that is, the effective execution of criminal laws. Now crime being punished does not inspire hatred. In fact it lessens it, for compassion comes to take its place and becomes mixed up with it. In fact it destroys it, for vengeance extinguishes all hatred. In fact it produces the opposite effect, for compassion is the opposite of hatred, and it is very often the case that in seeing the crime punished, compassion overcomes and extinguishes all other feeling, and only compassion remains. And often the punishment, albeit just and fair, appears worse than the crime itself; and very often it is odious, partly because of pity, partly because some through baseness of mind and lack of self-esteem, others through knowledge of man, feel themselves more or less distantly capable of sinning, and no one likes to be punished, indeed everyone themselves hates being punished. —Drama [3450] with a happy ending destroys the effect of one of its parts through that of the other. (See p. 3122.) I mean compassion. (I have already spoken [→Z 3097ff.] of hatred in the face of guilt, which too is destroyed by the catastrophe.) Compassion is no longer experienced for the righteous, etc., man who has had good fortune, however unfortunate he may have been. Almost everyone would be content to arrive at the same fate by the same route. No compassion is felt for the oppressed person who is avenged. Now it is extremely foolish to strive in a drama, etc., to arouse a feeling which the drama itself then extinguishes directly, and which, not by chance, but through the author’s own intention and the nature of the work, cannot leave any trace of itself once the performance or reading is completed, a feeling that cannot endure, and which by enduring counters the effect desired and sought after by the author and by the nature of the drama. And when to arouse this feeling—for instance compassion for those who are undeservedly unhappy—is (as usually happens) the principal purpose that author and drama set themselves, to ensure that this is short-lived, to destroy it in the way referred to above, is a contradiction in terms: [3451] principal but short-lived, principal and yet to be destroyed willingly and deliberately with the drama itself, principal and yet not arising from the drama as a whole, principal and yet not to last right to the end and even after the end, and not to have to be produced by the drama considered as a whole: a different, indeed, opposite effect to that which was set as its principal purpose, to have to be produced by the drama considered as a whole. —Naturalness (see pp. 3125–33) and verisimilitude are much greater in dramas with sad endings than those with happy ones, for this is how the world goes: crime and vice triumph, the good are oppressed, fortune and misfortune are the lot of those who do not deserve them. —But in the world, a fortunate man is usually referred to as good, and vice versa. Drama calls goodness and evil by their own names, and shows the character and moral conduct of those who are fortunate and unfortunate as they really are. Hence its great usefulness, hence the hatred and scorn which originates from drama toward those who are evil but fortunate, and vice versa. Not from altering the nature and truth of things and making vice unfortunate and virtue the opposite. [3452] This is of great moral utility, something that is very rarely sought out and obtained, and it is truly enough to produce hatred and indignation, to make known the true moral qualities and true merits of both the fortunate and the unfortunate, and to bring them before the eyes of all. And hatred, scorn, vituperation, infamy, indignation, pity, esteem, praise are not trifling punishments and rewards. They are certainly the only ones assigned to vice and virtue in this world. It is no small thing that they should both obtain their deserts, that one should be punished, the other rewarded, as both may be, that the nature of things should have its place, that the established order of human affairs and the decree of nature be enacted. Which order and decree is none other than this: that the wicked are to be fortunate and infamous, the good to be unfortunate and glorious or pitied. An order which is often disturbed, and a decree which is very often transgressed, not so much with respect to fortune and misfortune as with respect to blame and praise, hatred and love or compassion. —The listener,1 when he sees vice and crime represented in vibrant, hateful colors in the drama, strongly desires to see it punished. And conversely, when he sees [3453] virtue and merit oppressed and unfortunate, and made lovable and dear to him by the poet with beautiful and vivid strokes and artifice, he conceives a keen desire to see them restored and rewarded. Now, if the drama itself does neither one nor the other (see pp. 3109–10), that is, if it leaves vice unpunished or even rewarded, and virtue unrewarded or even punished and ill-fated, two very fine effects follow, one moral, the other poetic. The first is that precisely because of the ill-fated outcome for virtue and the opposite for vice represented in the drama, the listener believes he has an obligation to himself to change as far as he can the fate of those wicked and virtuous people, by punishing the former with the greatest possible hatred and anger, and rewarding the latter with the greatest possible feeling of love, compassion, and praise. And in this mood of utter abhorrence and loathing for the wicked and tenderness and pity toward the good, he departs the play. Who can fail to see how moral and good and desirable is the disposition thus awoken? And this [3454] is truly the only way to ensure that the listener leaves with a passion for virtue, and as a passionate enemy of vice, the only way of turning love for one and hatred of the other into passion, which is very difficult to bring about in anyone today, and which has always been difficult to obtain in the vulgar and plebeian hearts of the multitude, but which could not be more useful, for neither that love nor that hatr
ed, being pure reason, will ever be effective in man if they are not transformed into passion, as they were not infrequently in antiquity. The poetic effect is that a drama thus formed leaves a strong feeling in the hearts of the listeners, makes them leave with their minds upset and stirred, by which I mean still upset and stirred, not having been upset first and then soothed, first inflamed and then doused with cold water, as is the case of dramas with happy endings. In other words it produces a great, strong effect, a keen impression and passion, and not only produces it but makes it last too, which dramas with happy endings do not, and this effect is lasting [3455] and solid. Now what else is required of a poem, poetically speaking, than to produce and leave a strong, lasting sentiment? even if this is not also useful or moral, as it is in this case. Certainly, there are very few poems of any kind which achieve this purpose; and those few poems of any kind which do achieve it, are not and cannot fail to be anything but great, illustrious, famous and true poems. Now imagine that a drama, having moved you to hate the wicked, delivers him to you, so to speak, bound, punished, put to death. You depart the play with your heart entirely soothed. How could it be otherwise? Which of your feelings is left superior to the others? Are they not all left in the most complete equilibrium? And can a poem which leaves the feelings of its readers or listeners in complete equilibrium be called poetry? Does it produce a poetic effect? What else can it mean to be in complete equilibrium, other than to be calm, and without any agitation or turmoil? And what else is the proper office and purpose of poetry, than to move the feelings, this way or that, but [3456] always to move them? As for balance, you see on the one hand the hatred and anger you had conceived, on the other the vengeance which placates and purges one and the other; on the one hand desire, on the other the object of that desire, namely the punishment of the wicked. The entries are balanced, the deal is struck, the negotiation completed, the interests matched equally: you shut your ledger book and think no more of it. Indeed, the listener departs from the drama with a happy ending in precisely the same way as a person who has received an offense and quietly exacted full vengeance for it, or who has received full satisfaction for it, who returns home and goes to bed with the same calmness and with his mind as much at rest as though no offense of any kind had been committed, and retains no thought of it whatever. A fine effect of a drama, representation, or poem this is: to leave such a trace of itself in the minds of the spectators or listeners or readers, as though they had not seen, heard, or read it. It would have been better to have gone to a tournament, some games, equestrian or whatever, which at least leave [3457] some trace of wonder, delight, or something else in the mind. But in truth, a drama with a happy ending leaves no mark at all on that part of the soul where drama and poetry must act. If it leaves any trace in any part of the soul, this is either alien from poetry or is secondary to it, or extrinsic, accidental, circumstantial, partial in the sense of not being produced by the entirety of the composition, possibly more proper to the decoration, action, etc., of the spectacle than to the drama, not poetic, etc. Now, as for the effect of drama with a happy ending considered poetically, this is as has already been shown, or rather, there isn’t any, it is null, and so far as the whole is concerned, poetically speaking, drama with a happy ending produces no effect at all. As for the moral effect, what hatred, what anger toward vice can remain in one who has seen it totally cast down, defeated, humiliated, and punished? The punishment which the listener would himself have apportioned in his heart, has been taken care of by the poet. The poet has done everything, the listener no longer has anything to do, and does nothing. The passion which he would have conceived, has already been released by the poet himself: [3458] thus it remains his. The anger, the hatred which the listener would have brought with him, have been satisfied by the poet. Hatred, anger, and any other passion that has been satisfied does not persist. (Does not persist, I mean, in the sense not of habit but of action, for which the poet alone is responsible.) Thus the listener leaves the drama without any hatred or anger or any other passion toward the wicked, vice, or crime. All this discussion regarding the part given to the wicked in drama, applies equally to that which is given to the good. —I shall close these observations with a real example told me by one who was present at the time. A few years ago Alfieri’s Agamennone was put on in Bologna. It aroused keen interest in the audience, and so much hatred toward Aegisthus, among other things, that when Clytemnestra leaves her husband’s room with the blood-stained dagger and finds Aegisthus, the audience cried out furiously to the actress that she should kill him. But given that in that tragedy Aegisthus proves to be favored by fortune and the innocent continue to be oppressed, it was seen what real tragedies can produce in the minds of their audience when they have [3459] sad endings. For since the actors promised the audience that Oreste, also by Alfieri, would be performed the following evening, in which they would see the death of Aegisthus, they left the theater shuddering because the crime had gone unpunished, saying that they were determined to pay any price to return the following day to see the punishment of the villain. And indeed the next day before evening the theater was already so full it could not hold any more people. Whether such great hatred which the first tragedy was able to inspire and leave for a villain who lived 3,000 years ago, and such burning passion and such keen effect which it could produce and leave is considered morally or poetically, in either case it may be seen how tragedies with happy endings offer little use or pleasure. And comparing the effects of this play with those produced by Oreste, which were certainly much less profound and keenly felt (although this second one is a fine tragedy), it can be noted by any average observer whether a drama with a sad ending, or one with a happy ending, is to be preferred, [3460] and which of the two has the greater force on minds, has the most theatrical and poetic effect, and is the most moral and useful. —All the above discussion could be applied, with due modification, to those dramas in which the misfortune of the good characters or those undeserving of such a fate, does not come from the wicked or the vices or faults of others, but from fate and circumstances, such as Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex, Alfieri’s Sofonisba, and many tragedies of different ages and languages, and many modern sentimental dramas in various nations. And similarly of those dramas in which misfortune springs from the guilt, but either involuntary or pitiable, etc., of the ill-fated persons themselves, as may be said of Oedipus Rex, Phèdre,1 and many other dramas, in particular modern ones or tragedies, etc. And again from the above observations, it will be possible to gather whether it is preferable for the outcome of such dramas to be happy or unhappy, for the fate of the protagonists to change or to be kept the same, for it to become unhappy having been happy, or vice versa, etc. (16–18 September 1823.)

  Relatar [to relate] in Spanish, i.e., to refer, to recount, from relatus from the verb refero [to bring back]. Relater in old French has the same meaning. (18 Sept. 1823.)

  [3461] Latin poets (and the other writers, proportionately, according to what befitted them) used Greek mythology not as a result of their having borrowed the Greeks’ literature and poetry from them, but because, whether their religion came from the Greeks or elsewhere, such mythology belonged to the Latin religion no less than it did to the Greek, and was popular and was believed by the people in Latium no less than it was in Greece. Hence, if this or that fable adopted, mentioned, etc., by the Latin writers or poets was borrowed from the Greeks, whether it had clearly been invented first of all by some Greek poet, or had circulated in Greece and not Latium, etc., it does not follow that the mythology used by the Latin authors was not as much Latin as it was Greek, which in fact it was. For it was always legitimate for poets to build, so to speak, on the foundations of popular opinions, indeed it was always required of them. Hence, if the Latin poets built on such national popular opinions, or if they used other peoples’ constructions, or if foreign branches were grafted onto the domestic trunk, they should not be reproached for this. Nor for that reason [3462] did they intend to
introduce a new kind of popular opinions to the nation and make them the subject of their poetry, nor did they falsely suppose a kind, a system of popular opinions that did not exist in their nation, but rather they grafted, built, worked on what did actually exist. Similarly, it is certain that from whomsoever the Greeks took their mythology, they took their popular religion from the same place, and that the Greek religious and mythological system, insofar as its substance, nature, principal part are concerned and in general, did not with the Greeks belong to the poets before it belonged to the people. And if the Greek men of letters, as is said, used the literature, teachings, etc., of the Egyptians, Indians, or other peoples, they did not for this reason adopt in their fictions the mythologies of those nations, which had to be popular and national, etc. The fact, then, that we have inherited Greek and Latin literature, the fact that our literature is modeled on it, indeed so to speak is a continuation of it, is no valid reason for us to use Greek or Latin mythology as the ancients used it. For we have certainly not [3463] adopted the Greek and Latin religion along with their literature, nor did the Romans, as I have said, use Greek mythology simply because they had adopted Greek literature, nor did the Greek poets and writers use the mythology of the Phoenicians or whoever because they took their literature from those people. It was, rather, for the reasons I have mentioned above, which do not apply in our case. Our modern national popular opinions are quite different from those of the Greeks and Romans. And Italian or modern writers who do use the ancient fables in the manner of the ancients, exceed all characteristics of proper imitation. Imitation is not copying, nor, reasonably speaking, does one imitate unless the imitation is adapted and suited to the circumstances of the place, time, persons, etc., in which and among which the imitator is located and for whom he is imitating and to whom such imitation is destined and directed. Such imitation can be noble, worthy of a man, and a lofty spirit and mind, [3464] worthy of a literature, worthy of being presented to a nation. And a literature founded anyway on imitation such as this may be national and contemporary and deserving of the name of literature. Otherwise, the imitation is that of monkeys, and a literature based on it is unworthy of the name, both because it is too base, being that of monkeys, and because a literature which is foreign among its own people and ancient in its own time cannot be literature in itself, but at best, if it is perfect (which it never is) a part of another literature or a copy to be looked at with the same interest as one looks at an ancient painting, etc., and no more. In truth it appears that our poets, in using the classical fables (as the oldest Italians and foreigners writing in Latin did), affect not to be Italian but foreign, not modern but ancient, and that they make a virtue of it, and that this is the inheritance of our poetry and literature, not to be modern or our own but ancient and somebody else’s. An affectation and fiction that is barbarous, [3465] repugnant to reason, and with such a blemish a poem is not truly a poem, and a literature is not truly literature. In the same way as that literature and language which our pedants1 use today is not our literature or language, as they affect and pretend to be ancient Italians, and disguise as much as possible the fact that they are modern Italians, that they have some ideas which the ancient Italians did not have because they could not (as perhaps Cicero did in relation to Cato the Elder, etc., or Virgil with Ennius, etc.?), etc. etc. Hence it follows that today we have no literature or language, for our language, because it is not modern despite being Italian, is not our own, but is that of other Italians, and because there is not, never has been, and never can be a literature that is not modern in its time; and if it does exist, it is not literature.